


Enduring Love

by oschun



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Seasons 1-8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 01:00:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17971457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oschun/pseuds/oschun
Summary: “What do you think it would look like, Sam?”“What?”Dean looks across at the two motel beds. “Us.”Sam swallows hard. He doesn’t need to ask Dean what he means. For a minute, he lets himself imagine it, sees himself stripping off his clothes, going over to the bed, lying down on it and waiting for Dean to join him. He flushes hot.Dean’s expression is hard when Sam looks at him. “And then what do you think it looks like a month from now? A year from now?”





	Enduring Love

Sam’s home late from school.

Dean’s waiting for him in the kitchen, his expression tight and arms folded in hard lines across his chest.

His anger is justified. Sam promised he’d be home an hour ago. It’s possible he promised that yesterday, too, and failed to be on time. He places his book-heavy backpack on the kitchen counter and aims an apologetic smile in Dean’s direction. 

Dean ignores him and silently goes over to stir the macaroni in a toxic yellow sauce he’s thrown together for dinner. Sam knows the silent treatment is because he thinks it’s a more effective punishment than just saying he’s pissed. And he’s right. Sam really hates it when Dean ignores him.     

There’s a small yellow blob on Dean’s upper lip. He always taste-tests his terrible cooking like he’s a chef on a TV show. There’s another yellow blob hanging next to a cluster of dead flies in a greasy spiderweb near the stove. Sam’s stomach turns. Dean never notices that kind of thing. 

Trying something else, he says he’s hungry and dinner smells really good, watching how Dean stirs the gloopy mess in the pot a little slower, a little less accusingly.

It’s almost too easy.

They eat seated at the counter and Sam tries to talk about his day, but Dean’s obviously not really listening and keeps glancing at an article in a newspaper open at his elbow. Something about a murder. It’s always something about a murder. Sam watches his distraction and feels painful resentment simmering in his chest, even though he has no right to it. Dean cooked and he was late so he’s lost his right to Dean’s attention.

Despite this legitimate limitation of his brotherly rights, he seriously considers stabbing Dean in the hand with a fork to get him to really look at him, to really listen.

Looking up briefly, Dean gives him a small, distracted smile before looking away again and frowning at the news article.

Sighing at the pointlessness of his desires, Sam ignores the urge for cutlery violence and eats his macaroni in silence.

When they’ve finished eating, Sam runs his finger around the edge of the plate and licks it clean, then starts telling Dean about the homework assignment he was working on in the library that made him late. He doesn’t really mean to do it, but part of the story becomes about pretending he was working with some kids from his class. He doesn’t tell Dean about how unfriendly they’d all been to him today, what a blank wall they’d been against his fake sociability.

It’s so hard always being the new kid at school. It’s so hard always pretending. He wants to tell Dean that studying hard at school is the only thing that makes everything else less hard.   

Dean nods his head, not even pretending to listen as he circles things in the newspaper with a red marker pen. Sam thinks about stabbing him with cutlery again and tries to blink away the prickling feeling that’s been itching his eyes all day.

Pulling himself together, he gets up and clears the counter, leaving Dean to figure out the hunt he’s obviously working on to impress dad - who is away somewhere else, somewhere dangerous, somewhere far away from them.  

Sam squirts dish-washing liquid into the sink and runs the hot, just a little cold, watching the steam rise from the water. Turning off the faucet, he takes a small breath and plunges his hands into the sink, silently watching them turn red in the heat. They look like somebody else’s hands.

The dissociative pain makes him feel slightly better. He breathes out slowly and washes a plate, puts it in the plastic drying rack, then washes the next plate and lifts it out of the water, looking at it like he’s never seen it before. It’s so ugly. A chipped, dirt-ingrained thing. A motif of a boy on a bicycle circles the edge. He wonders how many other people who've rented the house have eaten off it. 

He’s suddenly so angry for reasons he can’t even fully articulate to himself that he purposefully just drops the plate on the floor next to him. It smashes loudly.

He feels Dean’s eyes on his back.

“You okay there, Sam?”

Unsure how to answer that question, Sam shrugs in response, washes a glass and lets it slip from his wet fingers to smash on the floor next to him. It’s the only answer he has. He can feel a splinter of glass underneath his bare foot. It doesn’t hurt. It feels like relief. It makes the scratchy feeling in his chest dissipate a bit, pauses for a moment the movie reel in his mind of an endless succession of new schools and hostile kids and terrible food and absent fathers and distracted brothers. 

Dean steps up next to him and takes another glass from his hands before he can drop it on the floor, dries it with a dish towel and places it on the counter.   

They look at their mirrored reflection in the window in front of the sink. Dean’s expression is careful and questioning. After a few silent seconds, Sam looks away, washes another glass and passes it to Dean to dry.

Sam looks at their reflections again when Dean pauses with it in his hands. And because Dean is always exactly his own perfect, irritating self, he suddenly grins and casually throws the glass over his shoulder so it smashes against the wall behind them.

Laughing makes the bad feeling in Sam’s stomach dissolve. Dean always gets it. He’s an asshole, but he always gets it.

Dean swats him around the back of the head with the dish towel and pulls him close, arm around his neck so he can grin into the hollow of Sam's collarbone, dry lips against his skin and a hint of teeth against the bone. “You’re a fucking idiot. Dad’s going to kill us for breaking this stuff.”

Sam pulls back far enough to see the whole of Dean’s face, close enough to see the paler green that flares around his pupils, strangely overwhelmed for a second at being this close to him. “Sorry I was late. Thanks for cooking me dinner.”

Dean’s eyes crinkle, first in humor, then in a grimace of pain. “I’ve got glass in my foot, you asshole.”

Sam smiles and says, “Me too.” He looks down at the blood seeping out from under his foot, suddenly aware of a throbbing pain in his heel.

They hobble into the sitting room, sit on the couch and remove the glass from each other’s feet with their fingers because the tweezers are missing from the first aid kit.

 

***

“You okay, baby?” Jess asks him, rubbing his feet, her gentle fingers unknowingly touching a scar underneath his foot. Sam wears his memories of Dean in bodily scars. He can’t bear these attacks of the past.

She pats his feet resting in her lap and smiles when he nods, then turns back to the movie they’re watching. Absently, she reaches forward to take another handful of popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table. She’s so beautiful. She’s in her pajamas, her long wet hair wrapped in a towel.

It’s a Thursday night at Stanford. The other life. The one he’d tried but failed to live.

Sam turns away from her and looks out the window when he hears the throaty rumble of a car engine. He’s always looking away, can’t seem to master the skill of living fully in the present moment. He’d thought this distractedness would have left him. Here, where he’s safe, where he’s meant to be content.

Is contentment the same thing as happiness?

He doesn’t think so.

 

***

After Stanford, after she dies, after the idea of any other kind of life dies inside him, he and Dean fall into a rhythm that is all their own. It makes them good at the job, but it’s impossible to predict all the things that can go wrong. Sometimes they’re unprepared or they make mistakes or they’re too slow or not smart enough. Sometimes it’s just dumb luck both of them make it out alive.

They’re in Ohio and through a combination of factors—mostly bad timing—Sam is lying on a warehouse floor bleeding into the cold concrete.

Dean’s panicky and angry - anger always being the undercurrent emotion when Dean’s freaked by something.

There’s a lot of blood. Sam’s vision is blurring at the edges. His jeans are a shredded mess where the creature dug its claws into him and ripped. He dazedly watches Dean pull off his belt and frantically wrap it tourniquet-tight around his thigh. It’s Dean’s favorite belt. He’ll have to throw it away because Sam’s blood is seeping into the leather and staining it. He’ll complain about it for weeks, maybe months.

Sam knows he’s going to pass out, can feel the blood draining from his face, the tingling coldness in his hands and the weird feeling in his chest like his heart is a ball losing momentum and bouncing slower and slower.

“Jesus, Sam, I fucking told you I could handle it. Why did you come back when I fucking told you not to? Jesus! Fuck!”

Woozily amused by his cursing, Sam tries to smile. Dean’s always funnier when he isn’t trying to be funny. Stroking a bloody hand down Dean’s cheek, he tries to tell him he’s always got his back and Dean should know that by now. How many times does he have to prove it.

It comes out in a mumbled jumble and Dean angrily demands, “What?”

“You’re my brother,” Sam tries to say, rallying his jaw and lips to articulate the words, looking at the brightness of Dean’s green eyes and the vivid redness of the bloody handprint smeared down his face.

“You’re an idiot, that’s what you are. What I really fucking need is for you to do what I tell you, Sam.”

Sam smiles again. That’s not what Dean needs at all. He’s still smiling when darkness closes over him like the shutting of an eye.

He wakes up in a hospital bed. Dean’s snoring lightly in a too-small chair next to the bed, uncomfortably curled up in it like a big armadillo.

They leave the hospital a few hours later and hole up in an abandoned farmhouse because the credit cards are maxed out.

For a week they play poker and drink whiskey out of chipped coffee cups. Sam lies on a dirty mattress with his bandaged leg propped up on a pillow and Dean sits cross-legged on the floor next to him. They don’t go into town, just stay enclosed in the cocoon of the abandoned farmhouse and eat stale-bread sandwiches and cold food from cans like they don’t have a choice.

They complain about the lack of TV and internet, but don’t really mean it. Dean cleans the weapons and rearranges the trunk of the Impala. Sam rereads _To Kill a Mockingbird_ \- reads parts of it aloud to Dean lying on a sleeping-bag next to the mattress. Dean makes jokes about his hard-on for Atticus.  

Sam watches Dean doing press-ups shirtless in the morning.

When the pain in his leg gets too much, Dean massages the cramping muscles of his thigh with hard fingers.

It’s the exact opposite of what contentment should feel like.

 

***

Dean is instinctive and unpredictable when they’re hunting. It’s what makes him so good at the job. He thinks on his feet and responds to situations in ways that even Sam can’t always predict. It’s exciting: reading his cues, responding, working in sync with him.  

Outside of the job, though, he is utterly, unchangingly predictable.

Sam watches him at the bar chatting up a pair of pretty girls, a blonde and brunette in jeans and tight-fitting t-shirts.

They could be anywhere and anytime.

Where they are is Fort Lauderdale two days after the job at the mystery spot when the trickster made Sam watch Dean die over and over again, then tortured him with a Wednesday that lasted for three months.

Nothing will ever feel quite the same.

After a hundred Tuesdays of watching Dean on repeat, Sam feels like he can reliably time his brother’s behavior to the second.

 _Five seconds_ , he tells himself.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Dean turns and gives him the raised eyebrow look. A dirty, inviting smile hovers at the edges of his mouth. 

Five seconds exactly.

Sam smiles back, comforted by Dean’s predictability and living, breathing vitality.

Shaking his head in what is mostly just a pretense at disapproval at Dean’s lechery, he looks back at his laptop, the simmer of rage just under his skin starting up again. If it’s the last thing he does in this world, he will find a way to kill the trickster for what he did to him at the mystery spot. He will find a weapon he can use to stab him in the face and make him pay.

“C’mon, Sam,” Dean says, sidling up to him, his arm around his shoulder and breathing beer-breath in his face. “Let it go for one night. There are a couple of hot girls over there just waiting for some Winchester brother action. Let’s make their night.”

He says it without any real conviction, a half-hearted attempt to irritate Sam, just part of an unthinking routine they’d established years ago.

Sam is also predictable. This is when he rolls his eyes and tells Dean he’s tired, that he’s going back to the motel room and he’ll see him in the morning.

He thinks about it for a second, thinks about the ability to change things, to break time loops, to alter fate. Closing his laptop, he gives the girls at the bar a quick look and says, “Yeah, okay, but I’m having the blonde.”

Dean blinks comically at him, his long eyelashes flicking with surprise.

Sam wonders what they would feel like if he put his finger just underneath them and felt the flutter against his skin. In a moment of self-awareness, he wonders if it’s normal to have thoughts like that, and wonders when they started. Was it always like this?  He can’t remember anymore. He knows it got worse after the clock started ticking on Dean’s final year.

He doesn’t wait for Dean’s response, just gets up and joins the smiling girls at the bar, his game face on.

Six beers and at least the same number of shots later, the four of them fall drunkenly into the dark motel room and collapse in separate pairs in the two single beds.

The sound of laughter, the thump of shoes discarded, the stripping of clothes, the fumble for condoms.

Sam thinks again about the flicker of Dean’s eyelashes as he wraps the blonde girl’s legs around his waist and slides into her, listening to the way her breath catches. He pictures the slow closing of Dean’s eyes as the other girl straddles him in the next bed. In the periphery of Sam's vision, she’s a curved, shadowy silhouette against the streetlight shining through the cheap curtains. Her back arches as she takes Dean’s length inside her. A soft, satisfied sigh slips from her mouth. Sam can feel the sound of her voice against his skin.  

Dean is surprisingly quiet, his heavy, uneven breathing just discernible above the other sounds in Sam’s ears. He’s an unknown presence barely an arm’s length away.

Sam lasts longer than he does, not out of competition, but because he wants to draw out this secondhand feeling, wants to make sure Dean hears him coming inside the body of the warm girl he holds against him when Dean’s already done, lying there in the dark and listening.

The next morning Sam wakes up with his head resting on a gently breathing chest, his hand cupping a soft breast and his feet hanging off the end of the bed. Dean’s eyes are open and focused on him. They look at each other across the space between the two beds for a few silent seconds. Dean looks away first.

The girls wake up. They’re called Sarah and Jade. They’ve been best friends since they were little kids and are as uninhibited about their nakedness as Dean is. They chat and laugh together as they search for their discarded clothes. Their casual attitude makes it all simple and easy. There’s none of the shame and awkwardness that should go with a hungover morning after a night of motel sex with strangers.

The four of them go for breakfast at the diner across the street. Weirdly, it feels like a double date.

Sam thinks he’s probably still drunk and finds himself talking too much and too quickly, trying to catch his breath in between sentences. Dean is being too obviously Dean. He flirts with the waitress, with Jade and Sarah. He aims cocky, combative remarks at Sam and kicks him under the table too often for it to feel natural. His gaze rests on Sam for too long and then skitters away when Sam meets his eyes across the table.

Sam’s hangover sneaks up on him when they’re leaving town. His stomach starts to heave, and he has to ask Dean to pull over. He throws up his breakfast on the shoulder of the road.

When he gets back into the car, Dean says quietly, “Wild night.”

“Yeah,” Sam responds in the same quiet tone and leans his head back, closing his eyes. His head hurts less than another nameless pain radiating from inside him. Sometimes it hurts just sitting next to Dean in the Impala. 

The thought of Dean not being there, of losing him to hell when his year is up, of a constant empty space beside him, makes Sam want to heave his guts up again.

The sound of the traffic whooshing by makes him think about the sound of hell-hound panting.

 

***

When it’s Sam’s turn to endure hell, Dean is there with him in the cage the whole time.

Dean cuts into him, rips him open, flays him down to muscle and bare bone.

Rationally, Sam knows it’s not Dean torturing him, that it’s Lucifer trying to add to his suffering by wearing his brother’s familiar face, but in the midst of all that terrible pain, Sam forgets.

He learns to drown out the things Lucifer says to him; the things Dean would never say to him. He just sees his brother there with him in the cage. It’s a comfort even as Dean rips him apart.

Real-world memory overlaps with the nightmare reality of hell and he hears Dean telling him about his years of being tortured, his eventual surrender to Alistair and how he got off the rack and turned into something he hated.

Hearing him confess his guilt and pain, Sam feels Dean’s torment more than his own and it feels right that he can now help carry some of that burden by becoming a substitute for all the souls Dean brutalized during his time in hell.

Sam was the reason Dean went to hell. Dean gave in to Alistair because he had no choice, because Sam put him there. With every cut into his flesh, Sam redresses that wrong.

By enduring this torture, by loving his brother no less and suffering alongside him, they can both transcend hell.     

 

***

It’s unnecessary, this vigil in the dark outside the home Dean now shares with Lisa and Ben. It’s a waste of time, impractical and bordering on sentimentality, but Sam can’t help himself. He’s drawn here.

He thinks it’s the strangeness of it - because, of course, it’s strange watching Dean playing at being a suburban husband, as if some shifter with a sense of humor decided to lead a really mundane existence wearing the skin of Dean Winchester.

And yet, the scene through the window is not unfamiliar. There are images in his mind of Dean exactly like this. They’re hidden snapshots, colored by the shimmery light of imagination rather than memory. He’d wanted this once for Dean. Now he doesn’t know what he wants or why he’s here.  

Something nags at him, something that won’t allow him to stay away. Around his brother has always been an invisible sphere of intense emotion, a forcefield so strong it used to scare him. He remembers being repelled by it when he finally grew up and realized he had his own choices. But the pull of it was always there, always in the periphery of his mind and calling to him, even when he was trying to run from it.

Now, standing here in the dark and watching Dean having dinner with his makeshift family—the glass of whiskey the only indication he’s not completely comfortable in his new life—Sam can only hear a dull echo of the wild beating drum of emotion he used to feel for Dean. It confirms what he’s known since the moment he was pulled from the cage. Dean is the litmus test. Something’s wrong. Something’s missing inside him.  

Hunting the alphas with the Campbells distracts him for a time, but then Dean’s pulled back into the life and Dean’s presence complicates everything. When Dean's around, he's forced into second-guessing everything he says and does, and it’s a strain. It was a lot easier when all he had to deal with was Samuel’s long, considering looks and the occasional comment that he was a cold bastard. 

He’s struck one day by a sudden realization. He desires Dean. It hits him while he’s watching Dean cleaning a gun, something he’s seen him do a thousand times. Dean racks the slide on a handgun and it all just slides into place, a series of flashed memories of deep physical longing, of wanting to touch him, put his mouth on him, taste him. Something that’s been there forever.

Dean looks up at him, sees his expression and Sam realizes… he knows. Dean knows.

A look appears in Dean’s eyes that Sam doesn’t understand. He has a feeling he would’ve understood it before. The missing part of him would’ve comprehended it, but now—the way he is—he can’t interpret its significance. 

Dean swipes his tongue across his top lip, and for a second, it’s all Sam can do not to slam him against a wall right there, regardless of the presence of the Campbells in the room.

The simple Right-Wrong part of his brain quickly kicks in and tells him it’s not okay to act on what he wants. _That’s not what normal people do_ , it tells him. He’s learned to follow some of the instructions from that inner voice, even though his instincts pull him in a different direction.       

It’s instinct that eventually tells him it’s the right decision to let Dean get turned. It’s a strategic move to get them closer to the Alpha vamp and he knows Dean can handle himself. Of course, it’s a gamble whether Dean will give in and feed before they’re able to use the Campbell cure on him. Dean’s naturally hedonistic. Self-control isn’t high on his list of personal virtues. But that’s mostly about his relationship with food and anger and booze and sex. Dean’s desire to do good and to be the hero trumps his other appetites.

Watching him get turned, gets Sam hard. It’s like a simulation of a sex act. The vamp is pressed up against Dean’s body, their hips aligned, Dean’s open mouth smeared with blood. Afterwards, he looks like he’s been ravaged. His lips are swollen and blood-stained. His body sags weakly against the dumpster.

Sam gets his own body under control and moves out of the shadows to help him out of the alleyway, back to the motel room where he tells him about the Campbell cure.

The desire doesn’t go away in the motel room.

Dean’s burning up, keeps pulling at his clothes like he’s thinking of stripping them off, constantly groaning under his breath. It’s distracting. He ignores Sam’s attempts to start a conversation and paces the room angrily. Eventually, he rips his shirt open, buttons popping either side of him. He goes over to the small kitchenette and fills the sink with cold water, then dunks his head in it. He turns around afterwards and impatiently runs his fingers through his wet hair, making it stand up in all directions. He starts pacing the room again. Trails of water trickle down his bare chest.

Sam sits down to hide his arousal, carefully adopts a concerned look and asks, “What can I do to help you?” 

Dean gives him a scowling look. “You want to help? Tell you what, Sam, you could stop breathing so damn loudly.” He holds his hands over his ears. “Christ, why is everything so goddamn loud.”

He collapses on the bed and is racked with convulsive shivering. Once it passes, he just lies there on his back, arms and legs akimbo like he’s too exhausted to move. And that’s when Sam notices he’s hard. Dean's erection is clearly visible in his jeans. His body must be responding to the blood-lust. Sam’s cock twitches in response.

Drawn almost against his will across the room, he moves over to stand and look down at Dean lying on the bed, looks at his mouth—his lips are slightly parted and drawing in unsteady, little breaths—down his naked chest, noticing the tight budding of his nipples, lower to the trail of hair between his belly-button and the edge of his jeans. His dick is curved to the left and straining against the heavy fabric.

Sam meets his gaze. “You’re hard.”

“So are you,” Dean replies steadily, not dropping his eyes to Sam’s crotch.

“Do you want to take the edge off? I can help you do that.”

Dean’s jaw hardens. “Is that the kind of thing you say to me now, Sammy?”

Sam shrugs. “It might distract you while we wait for Samuel to get here. It’ll take the edge off the thirst.”

“The person you were before you went to hell would never have said that to me.”

“He might’ve. Eventually. It’s a simple question, Dean. Yes or no?”

When Dean grits out a rough _Yes,_ Sam doesn’t wait for any more confirmation, just hauls off Dean’s boots, his jeans and underwear, then sinks his mouth over Dean’s cock, swallowing him all the way to the root.

Dean utters a sound that makes Sam’s cock blurt pre-come – a low, growling, pained sound from deep in his chest. He bucks up and Sam leans his weight on his forearm over Dean’s hips, pinning him to the bed. He glances up. Dean’s fangs are fully extended and there’s a wild look on his flushed face.

Sam pulls off and says in a low voice. “You try to bite me and I’m going to break your jaw. Or your arm. Or both. Do you understand? You’re not stronger than me yet.”

Dean snarls, then slowly retracts his teeth and nods. “Put your mouth to better use than threatening me, Sam. I’ve got it under control.”

Sam smiles at the commanding tone, then does what he’s told, lowering his head and sucking Dean’s cock back into his mouth. He tightens his lips and slides up and down the rigid length in a steady rhythm, working it with his tongue, sucking hard on the head, then sliding down and taking it deep in his throat.

Dean’s body goes rigid before he comes. Sam has to pin him to the bed again to stop him from thrusting so hard when he does tip over the edge, his hips jerking wildly and choking Sam with his release.

Sam swallows some but keeps most of it in his mouth. He shoves Dean over onto his stomach before he’s had a chance to recover from his orgasm, opens him up and lets the come in his mouth dribble over Dean’s hole.

“Fuck,” Dean mumbles incoherently into the mattress.    

Sam rubs the slippery wetness into Dean’s body, then slides his thumb all the way in to the second knuckle in one steady push. Dean groans loudly and continues cursing into the mattress, squirming and clenching around Sam’s finger. Sam replaces his thumb with his fore and middle fingers and stretches Dean open.

He pulls his fingers out and gets up on his knees, thumbs open the button of his jeans, tugs down the zip, pulls out his cock and waits.

Dean lifts himself up onto his forearms and looks over his shoulder. “C’mon.”      

Sam spits on his hand, rubs it along the length of his cock, grips Dean’s hips and pushes into him. It's too tight, hurts for both of them. Dean’s hands clench in the sheet, but he doesn't pull away, just breathes in raggedly and pushes back. He's not properly prepped but that vampire blood is obviously burning through him, making him stronger and more resilient to pain. Sam grips his hips and shoves deep inside him. 

Sam’s had a lot of sex since he got back. He’s hungry for it in a way he wasn’t before - just another sign there’s something different about him. This feels likes something else, though. It feels raw and intimate thrusting into this familiar body.

He runs his hand slowly up Dean’s spine and feels the way he shudders, noticing the scar cutting across Dean’s rib on the right side and disappearing around his body in a curved arc. He remembers Dean showing him the wound after he got back from a hunt with dad. Dean was about sixteen. Sam remembers his feelings at the time: a mix of admiration, fear and anger.

He wishes he could really feel something right now other than physical sensation. Feelings are ghosts hovering at the far edges of his consciousness.  

He comes almost as an afterthought.      

 

***

You’d think having sex with your brother would be one of the first things you’d remember after a wall between your memory and your conscious mind started to break down. Sam’s psyche protects him from that knowledge, leaves it moldering at the back of his mind and then hits him with it on a Thursday afternoon when he’s tired and traumatized and is sleeping in one of the spare rooms in Bobby’s house. The whole thing plays out in his mind in a dream, and he remembers every detail of it when he wakes up with a hard-on and puke in his throat.

Downstairs, Dean is sitting at the kitchen table with the laptop in front of him, his forehead furrowed in concentration. He looks up when Sam walks into the kitchen, takes one look at his expression and says “Fuck” in a resigned tone. Closing the laptop, he goes to the kitchen counter and pours two steaming mugs of Bobby-blend black coffee.

“I don’t suppose we could just not talk about this.”

Sam sits down opposite him, wraps his hands around the mug and shivers as if it isn’t the middle of summer. “How can you even be in the same room with me?”

Dean huffs an amused laugh.

Sam darts a disbelieving glance at him. Dean is looking at him intently but Sam can’t hold his gaze.

“You’re going to angst this to death, doesn’t matter what I say. I know that. But seriously, Sam, look at me.” He waits until Sam meets his eyes. “It happened. It’s not a thing that’s going to break us.”

“I—”    

“Yeah, you did. And I did. Both of us did. You didn’t have a soul and I was about to go Anne Rice on you. It happened.”

“You cannot be this casual about something this big, Dean!”

Dean sighs and wipes his hand across his mouth. “I’ve had more time to deal with it.”

“I took advantage of you. I let you get turned and then I took advantage of you.”

Dean laughs dryly again. “Without a doubt, it was a totally dick move to let me get turned, but you did not take advantage of me. You’re not carrying that shit around with you. I wanted it. Don’t look at me like that, Sam. I did. I wanted it.”

“I—” Sam struggles. “I was rough with you.” 

“Oh Christ.” Dean runs a hand over his face, a faint flush coloring his cheekbones. “Yeah, and it turns out I like it rough. You didn’t hurt me. I was amped up on vamp blood. You didn’t take anything I wasn’t giving right back.”

Sam stares into the black, oily coffee in his mug. “I can’t ever make up for what I did during that year.”

Dean slams his fist on the table. Coffee sloshes all over it and the laptop nearly bounces onto the kitchen floor. “You paid for it. When you were in hell. You sacrificed yourself and that counts for something. You’re not responsible for what you did when you had no soul.”

He leans forward and puts his hand over Sam’s clenched fist resting on the table. Sam jerks away like he’s been burned.

Dean smiles tightly, then reaches forward and grabs his hand again. “Don’t do that. Don’t pull away from me.” He covers Sam’s hand with his, the warmth of it instantly seeping through Sam’s skin.

“We’re okay. With everything we’ve been through, we get a free pass on this. We deserve it. We can put it behind us, Sammy.”

 

***

They don’t talk about it, not after that raw conversation in Bobby’s kitchen.

But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

Everything’s hard because Sam’s continually aware of Dean’s physical presence, so careful around him, so wary of accidentally touching him or looking at him for too long. And it’s hard not to look at him, to not see him in a new way. Dean’s body is a minefield. Sam tries to ignore it, but he’ll forget himself for a second and get mesmerized by a glimpse of Dean’s collarbone or the freckles on his forearms, then return to reality and see the knowing look on Dean’s face. It fills him with shame.

It’s dangerous, too. They’re out of sync with each other and that causes all kinds of problems on the job.

It takes Dean nearly getting killed on a routine hunt for things to come to a head.

They’re sitting opposite each other at the table in their motel room. The right side of Dean’s face is livid with bruises, his lip’s split and his arm is in a sling. He’s drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.

Sam’s nursing a beer, stripping the label off it in ragged strips. “This was my fault.”

Dean takes a pull from the bottle of whiskey and gives him a long look. “Your head’s not in it.”    

Sam nods, then drains his beer. He blows the strips of paper off the table and angrily watches them flutter to the floor.

“What do you think it would look like, Sam?”

“What?”

Dean looks across at the two motel beds. “Us.”

Sam swallows hard. He doesn’t need to ask Dean what he means. For a minute, he lets himself imagine it, sees himself stripping off his clothes, going over to the bed, lying down on it and waiting for Dean to join him. He flushes hot.

Dean’s expression is hard when Sam looks at him. “And then what do you think it looks like a month from now? A year from now?”

Sam grits his teeth. “You don’t know what it will look like.”

Dean raises his eyebrows, grimaces with pain and carefully presses the bruised skin at his temple. “Don’t I? You think there’s any way it doesn’t lead to us fucking each other up completely?”

Wearily, Sam answers, “We’re already fucked up.”

“There’s a lot of mile markers along that road. You really want to see how bad it can get?”  

Sam’s grip tightens on the beer bottle in his hand. He can’t hide the longing he feels when he looks across the table.

Dean sighs, then stands up and starts unbuttoning his shirt one-handed. “Okay, door number one it is.” He just looks resigned.

Sam back-hands his beer bottle off the table, and then, with an enormous effort, forces himself to get up and walk out the door.  

He stays away for a month. That’s how long it takes for him to come to terms with the idea that he has to build a wall in his mind around his desire for Dean the way Death built a wall around his memories of hell.

Staying away permanently is not an option. He’s not leaving Dean out there on his own just because he can’t manage his own screwed up emotions.

That makes it sound easier than it turns out to be. Sometimes he visualizes it as him building some kind of rough and crooked Tower of Babel on his own, just piling one rock after another on top of each other, the end never in sight, the endless vault of heaven forever out of reach. Other times he’s Sisyphus rolling that single huge boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down again and for him to have to start all over again.

But it’s not for nothing that he’s been called stubborn his whole life. The weeks and months roll by and eventually a year passes and it gets easier.

It becomes a scar rather than an open wound. That’s how he’s always worn his relationship with Dean – like it’s a scar.

 

***

When Dean kills Dick Roman and then disappears in an explosion of black, Sam’s left so utterly alone, he thinks he’ll be crushed by it.

Bobby’s gone. Cas is gone. Kevin is gone. It’s like standing on the surface of a new planet with no emotional connection to anything on it. He can hardly catch his breath at first.

Amelia appears in his life and he reinvents himself, sublimates the weirdness of his losses into a narrative that makes sense in ordinary human terms. He almost starts to believe it himself. Almost. But it’s not like when he went to Stanford or when he tried to reinvent himself as the savior of the world with Ruby at his side and the demon blood singing through his veins. He’s too tired, too experienced to be a true believer in the idea of reinventing yourself.    

Amelia’s disillusionment and drinking are comforting. She reminds him of Dean. They cling to each other like they’re hanging on to the broken remnant of a life raft.

The human spirit is ridiculously resilient. They start believing in each other, in the possibility of something that looks like a contented life together.

And then Dean comes back from purgatory.

It’s too easy to leave her and not to look back.

 

***

“Did you look for me, Sam?”

The lies roll off Sam’s tongue easily.

_We promised not to look for each other, Dean._

The truth is that it was a terrible, crushing, heartbreaking relief when Dean disappeared. It felt like dying, but it also felt like being freed.

It felt like getting up out of bed on shaky legs after being sick for so long you can’t even remember what it was like to feel normal anymore. Or like being crazy your whole life and your mind suddenly clearing and the world coming into bleak, cold focus. Who would voluntarily choose that - to lie back in that sickbed and long for the return of your disease or hope to lose your mind again?

_The girl had nothing to do with it, Dean._

The truth is that he loved Amelia. And before that—so very long ago now—he’d loved Jess very, very much. But what’s love in comparison to an all-consuming madness?

He watches Dean process what he says. They’re not talking. The words are out there, between them, but there’s very little connection between what they’re saying and what they’re thinking. Both of them know that, know they don’t actually understand what’s going on in each other’s heads.

Dean has become a stranger. A wary, edgy, battle-hardened stranger. And yet, regardless of the distance between them, Sam’s desire for him is still there. It's even worse now. The wall, so carefully built, has eroded during Dean’s absence. Want is seeping through the cracks, eating at Sam from the inside as he looks at Dean sitting on the hard floor of the motel room like he’s suspicious of the comfort of chairs and mattresses.

Sam must be wearing that longing in his expression because Dean’s jaw suddenly hardens and he snorts dismissively.

“Where are you going?” Sam asks him when he gets up and heads towards the door.

“To make a call.”

Sam stares at the closed door. Who exactly do you call when you’ve been in purgatory for a year?

Later, when he finds out about Benny and meets him for the first time, shakes his cold hand and finds out what he is, Sam realizes he’s not immune to pettiness and prejudice. The burning desire to shove Benny straight back into purgatory is not about the job or trying to protect Dean or about doing the right thing. It’s just jealousy.

 

***

It’s the trials that eventually change everything.

Finally, there’s the possibility of full redemption. For everything he’s done: for his mom, for Jess, for getting Dean sent to hell, for the apocalypse, for every terrible thing he did when he had no soul, for every person he hurt and got killed. The sin is being burned out of him from the inside. It’s his end-game. 

Until it isn’t.

“Let it go, brother,” Dean says to him in the church. “Just let it go.”

Sam can’t. It’s a thing that’s alive in him, moving like burning light through his veins. He feels like he’s already starting to come apart, to dissolve.

Until Dean pulls him close and kisses him on the mouth. An intimate, desperate kiss. “Don’t do it. You don’t need to do this. Let it go, Sammy.”

He’s a freight train hurtling along the tracks. Hitting the brakes sets off showers of burning sparks inside him and a long, screeching wail in his head.

Dean kisses him again, so hard that Sam can’t even breathe. He pulls Sam closer so they’re flush together along the length of their bodies. Sam can feel the strong and steady beat of Dean’s heart and the hard strength of his thighs.

“What are you doing?” Sam mumbles.

“Reminding you.”

Sam sucks in a breath. Dean takes advantage of his open mouth and presses his tongue inside. Warm, firm pressure and hot breath. His arms are wrapped tightly around Sam’s body like he’s trying to anchor him in the here and now. And it starts to work. Sam feels the power coursing through him slowing down to a steady pulse.    

“Don’t do it, Sammy.” Dean says against his mouth. “Don’t leave me.” He presses an open-mouthed kiss against Sam’s neck. Close to his ear, he whispers, “I need you.”

A sudden jolt of crippling pain courses through Sam’s body like he’s been struck by lightning. He cries out and stumbles backwards.

Dean pulls him back, puts an arm around his shoulder and supports his weight. “What is it? Are you alright?”

Sam stifles a groan of pain. “Let’s get out of here.”

There's a glimmer of relief in Dean's expression. He has to half-carry Sam out of the church because his over-loaded body just won't function properly. 

Outside, the angels are falling from the sky like burning stars.

“What do you think it looks like?” Sam asks him, looking directly at Dean and not up at the sky as heaven empties above them.

“What?” Dean asks, propping him up against the Impala, worry etched into his face.

“Us?”

Dean kisses him again, mouth slightly open, gentle pressure of his tongue causing the power throbbing through Sam to spark up. “Like inevitability, Sam. Like the end of the damn world.”  

THE END


End file.
